Bomber's movie bit

BIFFF movies don't start till the weekend so you'll have to wait till next week for those to start filtering through. Meantime, We saw 3 movies this week, all in the "entertain me" category. They were; The curse of the Were Rabbit, Stealth and Mr & Mrs Smith. Quite the seminal line-up, but where's the Steven Segal flick to really top it off? Well, maybe next week. I have to start by saying that, despite several ridiculosnesses (especially in Stealth), I enjoyed all of these. Of course the jewel has to be Wallace and Grommit in their new adventure, which won the Oscar for best animation at some award ceremony or other a couple of days ago.

-Danger of slight spoilery action, but nothing too dramatic, honest-

The Curse of The Were Rabbit stars our favorite chirpy northener and his dog, Grommit (the brains of the family) protecting their town from hungry rabbits in the run up to the annual vegetable contest. They are Pesto, the humane pest control company and, being both humane and successful, they have a basement chock full of cute bunny rabbits. All is going well until Wallace decides to engage in a bit of animal experimentation in an attempt to cure both his cheese fetish and the overwhelming hunger for prize vegetables that has gripped the local rabbit populace. Madcap mayhem ensues. "Hold on! Wallace and Grommit ... vivisection? are you sure?" I hear you cry. Don't worry, we are assured at movie's end that no animals were harmed in the making, etc etc. Nick Park of Aardman has managed to tell the traditional werewolf story with the humour and sharp eye for social mores that we have come to cherish from the W&G movies. He has left out the visceration of the protaganist, mind but it is W&G and so we must have some decorum, and some cheese. For me the stars of this show are the town's folk, who protect their prize vegetables with pith and vigor (and a helping hand from Pesto, of course). All in all this is a worthwhile addition to the Aardman collection, but I would temper that by saying I don't think it's the best. I think they missed a bit of an opportunity to add depth to the character of the rabbits themselves (Rabbits, depth of character, must be Aardman) but overall exactly the sort of cathartic romp that makes Nick Park's feature films so much fun.

Stealth (or Furtiv, as they call it in French) was a different matter entirely. We're almost in Segal territory here. We've got 3 "crack" pilots (1 a blond chick, gotta have sexual tension equality afterall) in a development programme for the next gen of stealth jet thingies. Lot's of fast flying and daring stunts anti-terrorist action as they go though their testing followed by sitting in bars in uniform with our main prota picking up blond chicks while the blond chick in a uniform sits next to him looking on. *yawn* let's get back to blowing stuff up please. Fortunately the movie pays little more than lip service to character building and we're soon on a carrier in the Phillipine Sea staring down the first live operation. Then they drop a bomb on the crew. There's a 4th pilot. Eh? the crew all muse, who could this dude be? We're all buddy buddy now, why a new guy? Well well, if the new crew member isn't a jacked up ZX Spectrum in a groovy round case. The movie from here on is pretty obvious, except perhaps right at the end, but the grounding for that is laid early on too so you'll see it .. oooh .. a couple of miles off. Believe me, your gray matter will not be taxed fathoming the plot out. AICN in their review made the excellent point that the cockpit debates about the moral fine points of ordered tactics ("no, there's a village next door, 1000s will die if we drop these bombs here" etc etc) and the changing of tactics to suit the pilot's objections (especially the blonde's, surprise surprise) are nothing short of ridiculous. However, the movie makers backed themselves into a corner with what they wanted to do with their main dude, the AI pilot, and so just ignore the impossibility of the whole thing and enjoy the flying and blowing stuff up bits, of which there's quite a lot. The other specific ridiculousness about this movie is that on first generation the plane AI is top notch, better than human, super duper flying machine rather than a semi-autonomous helicopter with a shotgun bolted to it, which is much more believable, frankly (what ARE those guys thinking....?)

Finally Mr and Mrs Smith, the Jolie / Pitt carriage that famously got the two of them together and allegedly Jolie up the Duff. Interesting point that Pitt and that Jennifer Aniston got married the same day that Bubble and I did back in '00. We had better beer, apparently. So this is a silly thing in the vein of, although not nearly as good/clever as, True Lies. The movie makers probably consider that they took the TL idea to "the next level" by having both partners be covert ops dudes unbeknownst to each other (in this case assassins, not spies), but they really didn't. It is, in parts, an interesting study on married life and the little things that irritate us. On at least 2 occasions, Bubble turned to me and said something like "you shut up" or "don't say a word", especially during the conversation about the curtains. This movie, like Furtiv (I much prefer the French title), will not tax the brain. It does however have plenty of Angelina running around in clothing inappropriate to kicking your leg that high and plenty of Brad and his signature body and facial ticks, which the girls seem to love so much. All in all an entertaining couple of hours, that would have been a more entertaining hour and a half, had they cut the shitty plot out completely and just had Ange and Brad going at it in the front room then running out to kill a bunch of guys.

Bomber out